The Right Feelings 

“No one wants war,” a reader writes. “It is always a last resort.” I’m sure he means it. But he couldn’t be more mistaken.

It’s a matter of record that some men have wanted and planned a war on Iraq for years. They were eager for war. Some people always are. War, for them, means gain, glory, advantage. There are brave men who see war as a chance to prove their mettle; Shakespeare’s Coriolanus illustrates the type. Others, more numerous and more cowardly, scheme for war but want others to do the fighting. The “conservative” press will furnish plenty of examples of this type. They have an odd habit of speaking of the soldiers as “we.”

Consider the pro-war propaganda of the hawks, the vicious attacks on the motives of “peaceniks,” the cheering and gloating. Does all this sound like the talk of people who regretfully accept war as a “last resort”?

The other day I wrote about little Ali, a Baghdad boy of 12 who lost his family and both his arms in a rocket attack. Thanks to a London tabloid, which has published pictures of him, his case has already excited international sympathy and horror.

But another reader mocks my “phony” concern for Ali. She is really saying that she feels no concern for him, and that nobody else should either. But feelings, neither mine nor hers nor anyone else’s, weren’t the point. The point is that, terrible as Ali’s fate is, we have a duty to face the morally objective facts of this war.

It never sinks in with some people that moral questions are more than a matter of “feelings.” Feelings are merely emotional indicators which themselves must be critically examined. Even sympathy may be misplaced; but in Ali’s case, I don’t think so. It should lead us to reflection.

But in the modern world, political debates are usually about feelings. They aren’t really debates; they are accusations, unprovable, unfalsifiable, about whether the other side has the Right Feelings. Taking the “wrong” side means you have the Wrong Feelings. You “hate” America, racial minorities, women, or the poor, as the case may be. The reasons you give don’t matter. No matter how logical they may be, they are nothing more than expressions of your Feelings, Right or Wrong.

Even journalism is infected by the primacy of Feelings. During earlier wars, reporters asked tough questions like “How is the battle going?” Now they ask the Couric Question: “How did you feel when ... ?”

How times have changed. Even the old religious inquisitions were concerned with truths, doctrines, creeds — objective things. “Do you believe this?” or “Do you deny this?” was the inquisitor’s pointed question, not the inane “How do you feel about this?” Today an inquisition would focus on our feelings.

Our feelings are pretty much beyond our control. They are what used to be called “passions,” meaning, literally, that they were passive — mutable, fugitive, something you suffered rather than willed. You could feel differently about the same thing at different times, depending on your mood. It was no use arguing about an emotion (literally, something that is moved by an outside force). You felt something or you didn’t. Of course emotions should be properly trained, but Reason was supposed to be sovereign over them.

But popular psychology has dethroned Reason, reducing it to the mere “rationalization” of Feeling. Inevitably, the debate on the Iraq war quickly turned into mutual recrimination about the Right Feelings. You stood to be accused of the Wrong Feelings about Saddam Hussein, America, or war itself. People who opposed the war felt obliged to protest that they “abhorred” Hussein as much as anyone else. Others felt — felt, mark you — that abhorring him was sufficient justification for war. I get countless messages from people asking me why I don’t seem to abhor him as much as they do. Don’t I know about the terrible things he has done to “his own people”?

It follows that those who wanted war — and some people, despite my gentle correspondent, certainly did — knew that their task was to whip up the Right Feelings in the American public. Some did try to make a sober case for war. But it was really propaganda that carried the day, and propaganda is addressed not to Reason, but to Feelings.

In the end, it was no contest. “Feelings” won — in a cakewalk.

Joseph Sobran